TSC to hire 11,000 teachers after Treasury allocates Ksh.3.7 billion

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is set to immediately embark on a recruitment exercise to enlist 11,000 teachers in a bid to ease shortages in schools.

This is according to the commission CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia who said the National Treasury has allocated Ksh.2.5 billion to TSC for the recruitment of 5,000 permanent teachers, and Ksh.1.2 billion for the hiring of 6,000 of their intern counterparts.

Dr. Macharia, who was speaking at Mitihani House in Nairobi during the release of the 2021 KCSE results on Saturday, said the recruitment drive will go a long way in addressing the shortage which currently stands at 114,581 teachers.

The new recruits, she added, will be deployed to schools as soon as the hiring exercise is concluded.

“I wish to assure that the commission will immediately embark on the exercise to recruit the teachers to ensure that they report to work as soon as possible to ease the existing teacher shortage in school,” she said.  

“During the impending recruitment of teachers exercise, we will put more emphasis on staffing sub-county secondary schools which admit the bulk of learners.”

Dr. Macharia went on to say that effective Monday, April 25, 2022, the TSC will similarly commence the training of 60,000 public and private secondary school teachers ahead of the implementation of the CBC Junior Secondary curriculum, which is expected to begin in January 2023.

“The first phase of this training will include both public and private secondary schools, including special needs institutions, and will be concluded on May 13, 2022,” she said.

“The target is to train all the 116, 024 secondary school teachers by the end of this year and therefore the public should be well assured that all our secondary schools will have been tooled by January in implementing CBC junior secondary.”

She similarly revealed that to date, a total of 229,292 primary school teachers and teacher training tutors have been trained on CBC.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, Macharia added, has similarly accepted the commission’s proposal to introduce a Mwalimu Award to recognize all teachers whose students perform exceptionally well in national examinations.

“The president has further directed the commission to work with relevant officers to explore modernities of institutionalizing this award within the existing policy and legal framework,” she said.